"Free speech" commenting extension Dissenter becomes spyware, banned from Firefox.

submitted by wizzwizz4 from github.com

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[–]Mnemonic 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Did it become spyware because firefox wanted to have a reason to ban it?

Or (as I guess) did the owners became greedy and made it into spyware with some updates?

Or was it spyware all along?

[–]wizzwizz4[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The second one. It used to only "phone home" when required for the functionality of the extension, but they added a new feature that reports absolutely every website you visit to the developers.

If you click the link, you'll see the code that adds that anti-feature.

Mozilla didn't say, but I'm 80% positive that's why they banned it.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

ELi5: What is this extension and what happened?

[–]wizzwizz4[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's basically a universal commenting system. These people set up a database that people can add to, and the extension shows all the comments related to the page in their database. In order to do this, it needs to send the web address of the page you're currently on to the people who run the extension. It used to do this only when you clicked to view comments.

The programmers recently made a change to add a "comment count" icon, which means that it "phones home" to ask for the comment count whenever you visit any page. This means that the extension tells them exactly where you're going on the web, and when, at all times – a drastic change that turns a useful tool into spyware.

They should've made this an "opt-in" feature. Instead, it's there by default, and turned on for everyone when they update. Mozilla, instead of letting the update go through, banned the extension.

I posted this in retaliation to this misrepresentation that says that Mozilla are trying to ban free speech.